china poot 1....

i'll get started on the weekend pictures and add more over the next week. always take so many pictures. our first day paddle took us into peterson bay so these first pictures are from that bay. above a seal is hauled out on a dock in the bay. he looked pretty happy up there enjoying the sunshine. not sure he appreciated our intrusion as much as we appreciated him.

i loved the cute houses in the bay. lots of long docks and stairways. no doubt lots of money in some of these houses. would be fun...but i'm just not in that financial bracket and it's not looking like i'm heading that way anytime soon. alas...

this is looking out towards homer and over on the left you can see a bunch of buoys which are part of an oyster farm out there.

look at that staircase...reminds me a bit of all the staircases in downtown ketchikan. can get crazy carrying your groceries in.

sandra and jennifer moved in on this otter. i tend to like to give the animals more space, but this guy seemed pretty non-chalant on the intrusion. loved the look on sandra's face...usually otters are a bit skittish and will drop under water when you get anywhere near them so this was pretty surprising. he must just be used to human activity.

he was awful cute and we spent quite a bit of time watching him. otters are just cool. look at those canines! i have a 300 zoom on my camera. took lots of pictures. i'm feeling like i may need to check my eyes again. on occasion it's hard for me to be sure i'm in focus on the shot.

hear no evil....scritch, scritch...

after camping out on the spit, we headed down to pay $5 for one last shower. there is an rv park at the end of the spit that has showers. i showered first as they tore down their tent so i took the opportunity to walk around the beach a bit. the right side of the spit is beaches, people are always out there walking, kite flying, dog walking...
below again is on a walk on the spit the night before. lovely sunset for us.

i'll jump back to peterson bay now...

as usual i'm out of any sort of order...backwards, but that's okay. you really just want to see the pictures anyway. i mean, who really reads this stuff. below we do a portage from china poot bay to peterson bay. peterson bay is much more active in that there are several homes in the bay and floating docks and such. looks like it would be a wonderful place to have a summer cabin or live year round if you could handle the isolation.

portage just means you haul your boat across some land. you want to do these at the high tide and not waste time on the other side so that you have some long walk if low tide happens. china poot changes dramatically based on the tides so best to pay close attention to them...a lesson we learned the next day. i am a bit of a weakling, especially in the upper arm department, so i'm not keen on hauling the boats around. in alaska you want to buy plastic boats. the fiberglass are far too fragile for the environment you generally kayak here. they are lighter, but the plastic is much more sturdy. once i convinced everyone to just use all 4 of us to haul the 3 boats. it was so much easier. seems to make sense, just get everyone together and lets move the boats, but it never seems to work like that. not sure why that is. it would be better for the boats as then they would be carried rather than dragged so much. though i tend to be vocal in my opinion, in these sort of situations i generally just keep my opinion to myself rather than make a deal out of stuff.

there were some wonderful rock formations on the shoreline in china poot. my kayak mate, amy, thought it was related to uplift of tectonic plates thousands of years ago. she was explaining what she'd read. that is what i remember. the mountains up here were getting taller as the plates tend to move them upwards in this area whereas other parts of the earth the plates were pushed down. the exposed roots are always cool too, how do some of these trees remain upright.

always love the colour of the water as well. our first paddle was in the afternoon. it was probably a slack tide, inbetween changes, on the high end. the water line has gone down so the tide may be begining to go out.

amy also drove down to homer with me. i'd worked the two nights before which had been a bit crazy. my one patient wasn't in because of mental issues, but he had those and combined with all the medications and such...well it was quite a rollar coaster day. they just don't put nights like that in those tv shows about medicine. those people always look so relaxed, like our job is so easy. by night two my guys was climbing out of bed pissing and shitting on the floor. with crazy people you try and hold off on restraining them because as soon as you do that the situation will just escalate before it improves. the pct they sent to help me sadly was not a good match for a person on the brink of totally going nuts and so that didn't help at all. i turned 46 about the time they guy totally lost it. my co-workers helped me strap my guy in bed and sang happy birthday to me. it was quite funny actually...but in a job like i have you have to laugh sometimes otherwise you'll go nuts yourself.

spent the time between shifts trying to clean the house, pack and prepare for the weekend trip. the carpets got cleaned on wednesday, though this room is still stinky so that cat must have really done a number in here and it will have to be the first room i get rid of the carpet in. that is clear. anyway, amy kept me entertained on the drives. since it's a nearly 5 hour drive to homer that was very helpful. i drove close to the speed limit both ways since last year on this very same trek i'd gotten an over $200 ticket. holiday weekends tend to mean speed traps.

below is the view from right below our yurt. there is a lagoon in the front part and then the bay. they have to drop you off and pick you up at high tide as at low tide the water level drops off and much of the bay is impossible to boat around. our kayaks were scraping bottom in some places coming back in on day 3 at a lower tide. the tide was coming in, but it was still low.

you get dropped off, all your crap is tossed on the beach and there you are. we'd rented our double from maco's. they were nice and all, but the upkeep on thier kayaks and kayak equipment wasn't too impressive. i would totally use the taxi service, but may get my kayak elsewhere next time. it is convienent though.

the rocks below are little islands that we passed coming and going to china poot. they were covered with birds. we just cruised past on the way out, coming back to homer we got to get a better look so i'll post those pictures later.

as you can see the weather was awesome. the boat trip out was at a pretty good speed. the water was flying past us. thus the picture below.

below is sandra as we crept out of homer. we were all enjoying all that sunshine and looking forward to a few good days of paddling.

can't remember the dogs name, but he joined us on our voyage. he had a bum leg, but he moved around the docks and boat with ease. always love a pup around. missed the pups already. my friend gails daughter and soon to be son-in-law watched the girls. nice folks so the dogs were in good shape. rio wasnt' even as clingy as usual so that has to be a good sign. they kinda got the shaft those last few days before i left, bog and street walks. today we just did the bog and hood as well. i have lots of post kayak knots to work out and the headache that went with those. the hip gets sore on long drives and the winging scapula isn't too keen on the kayaking. it's all part of the aging process i guess. i'm not willing to give in to pain and aging just yet.

lucky for me i have great dogs who just want to chill with me no matter what we do. loaded pics on facebook, read, slept and generally relaxed today. along with unpack, laundry...the usual post trip stuff.

below is amy, sandra and jennifer, my kayak partners for the weekend. all wonderful folks. have always had good luck with the people i travel with. no matter who you are with there are bound to be annoyances and aggravations, but good people move quickly past those things and get back to having fun and enjoying life. acceptance is a wonderful thing in this world. people who accept you for all your faults and foibles...is that a word?

it always seems like so much stuff. i'm sure we overpacked since we all knew we had a base camp of a yurt. when we got there we only had a bucket and rope for our food when we had expected a full bear bin. oh well...so far kayaks have made pretty decent bear bins, though i'm sure they could be ripped to shreds by a hungry bear. we had no bear sightings, though did see scat in the trails behind the yurt. i've always been practical about storage and so far have been without incident. that only takes one horrible time to change though. a few bears were shot over the weekend for charging. one in eagle river and another in denali national park. they just barely passed the ruling that firearms could be carried there and already a bear is dead. hmm....

a dog from a sled dog team in a village out of bethel i think killed a toddler this past week as well. the toddlers family was so ticked they took a gun and shot the entire dog team of 8-10 dogs i think. the whole things sounds horrible and tragic for all.

we stayed overnight on the spit in homer. this is the big harbor on the spit. it's a place of much activity in the summertime especially. there are several hotels and rv campgrounds. we stayed at one of the tent campgrounds. i slept in my element. i had two dog beds set up in the back and it was quite cozy. since tent sites tend to be the younger crowd being in the element saved me from listening to the all night partiers.

the salty dog is the bar on the spit. it's a pretty old place and it's got signed dollar bills plastered to the walls everywhere. we never went in the place, but i've been in before on occasion to get a drink. it's just standard homer spit. you see the sweatshirts everywhere.
the signage below is also on the spit...outside a fish packing place...lots of tourist operators work off the spit. i just liked that it had china poot on it and all the cool places around.

the next picture is just classic homer spit campground scene...loved the dane camping out there by the airstream. the kenai is seen as anchorage's playground. tons of locals head down this way to play through the summer.

just another shot from the spit. closer to the town side.

sandra huddles by the fire on our first night camping out on the spit. it can get windy out there as it's got no protection from winds at all.

i think this group was playing football out there. i believe this was nearly 11pm or so, didn't really look at the watch, but the days are long now so plenty of time for play.

another sunset on the spit shot.

jennifer baked a cake for me. so i got my birthday cake out there on the spit. sweet of her to do that! it was quite tasty. i'd brought an angelfood cake and frosting thinking that would be a little birthday cake thing to share...but they took care of me. the folks who camped next to us wished me happy birthday as well and we ran into them as they were backpacking in to china poot lake from halibut lagoon i think? we also saw them on the boat dock returning on monday. they had a good time. seemed like nice people...sometimes you meet people and you can tell you could totally be friends with them.

so that is sandra, jennifer and amy. amy and i didn't get to homer until after 8pm and then it took us a bit to find the glass recycling area so this must be after 9pm. for some odd reason anchorage has stopped recycling glass, but i'd heard homer still did so i've saved up a few dog food bags of glass to bring down. another reason to head to homer on occasion.

below is my cute kayak cake, complete with kayaker!!

one last picture of sunset on the spit...then i'm off to bed. til tomorrow or whenever i get back on here to toss in more photographs.